"It's not that I despise Apple or the wonderful products it showcases year after year, but the fact that almost every first generation Apple product has serious quality assurance issues bugs me beyond belief. Let's take a look at two of Apple's most successful products, the company's portable music player and its notebook series."

Yes, there are some companies that simply do not get quality. The true cost of your recall is NOT the number times rate of failure times settlement costs.

But, probably, if that is how your company figures it, there is no point in trying to explain to them where manufacturing profit margins come from and go to. You can't even tell them to go visit Toyota. They probably would have no idea what they were looking at.

At a telco I consulted for once, the Head of Quality ordered cable pressurization switched off to save money. It did, for a while. And when costs rose, it was kind of hard to tie them back down to anything specific...